Life Expectancy

Jimmy Tock comes into the world on the very night his grandfather leaves it. As a violent storm rages outside the hospital, Rudy Tock spends long hours walking the corridors between the expectant fathers' waiting room and his dying father's bedside. It's a strange vigil made all the stranger when, at the very height of the storm's fury, Josef Tock suddenly sits up in bed and speaks coherently for the first and last time since his stroke.

77 Shadow Street

Enter the world of the Pendleton: The original owner became a recluse - and was rumored to be more than half mad - after his wife and two children were kidnapped in 1896 and never found. The second owner suffered a worse tragedy in 1935, when his house manager murdered him, his family, and the entire live-in staff.... Craftsmen and laborers working on renovations disappear or go mad.... For years, the Pendleton is a happy place, until a bad turn comes again.... Voices in unknown languages are heard in deserted rooms....

The Darkest Evening of the Year

Amy Redwing has dedicated her life to the Southern California organization she founded to rescue abandoned and endangered golden retrievers. Among dog lovers, she's a legend for the risks she'll take to save an animal from abuse. Among her friends, Amy's heedless devotion is often cause for concern. To widower Brian McCarthy, whose commitment she can't allow herself to return, Amy's behavior is far more puzzling and hides a shattering secret.

The Silent Corner: A Novel of Suspense

"I very much need to be dead." These are the chilling words left behind by a man who had everything to live for - but took his own life. In the void that remains stands his widow, Jane, surrounded by questions destined to go unanswered...unless she does what all the grief, fear, confusion, and fury inside of her demand: find the truth, no matter what. There is no one else to speak for Jane's husband - or the others who have followed him into death at their own hands.

By the Light of the Moon

Dylan O'Connor, a gifted young artist, is attacked by a mysterious "doctor" and injected with a strange substance. He is told that he is now a carrier of something that will either kill him...or transform his life. Then he is told that he must flee before the doctor's enemies hunt him down. Stunned, disbelieving, Dylan is turned loose to run for his life - and straight into an adventure that will turn the next 24 hours into an odyssey of terror, mystery, and wondrous discovery.

Phantoms

They found the town silent, apparently abandoned. Then they found the first body strangely swollen and still warm. One hundred fifty were dead, 350 missing. But the terror had only begun in the tiny mountain town of Snowfield, California.

Hideaway

He was clinically dead after the accident - but was miraculously revived. Now Hatch Harrison and his wife approach each day with a new appreciation for life. But something terrible has come back with Hatch from the other side.

Jim &#34;The Impatient&#34; says:"NEW AGE MUSIC IS FOR THOSE WHO FIND ELEVATOR MUSIC"

The Door to December

Only three years old, little Melanie was kidnapped by her father. Six years later, police found her wandering the L.A. streets, her eyes blank. What had become of her in all that lost time...and what secret did she dare not even whisper?

Shadowfires

Rachel's request for a quick and clean divorce enraged her husband. She had never seen Eric so angry, so consumed by pure and terrifying hatred. Then, in the heat of the moment, Eric was struck down in a traffic accident. His death was instantaneous. Shocked and relieved, Rachel had nothing left to fear. Until Eric's body disappeared from the morgue - and Rachel was stalked by someone who looked like her dead husband.

Sole Survivor

Sole Survivor unfolds at a heart-stopping pace, as a desperate chase and a shattering emotional odyssey lead Joe to a truth that will force him to reassess everything he thought he knew about life and death, a truth that, given the chance, will rock the world and redefine the destiny of humanity.

Midnight

In picturesque Moonlight Cove, California, inexplicable deaths occur, and spine-tingling terror descends to this "edge of paradise". Growing numbers of residents harbor a secret so dark it is sure to cost even more lives.

One Door Away from Heaven

In a dusty trailer park on the far edge of the California dream, Michelina wants to change the direction of her troubled life but can't find her way. When a new family settles into the rental trailer next door, Micky meets the young girl who will change her forever.

The Good Guy

Timothy Carrier, having a beer after work at his friend's tavern, enjoys drawing eccentric customers into amusing conversations. But the jittery man who sits next to him tonight has mistaken Tim for someone very different and passes to him a manila envelope full of cash. "Ten thousand now. You get the rest when she's gone."

Breathless

Grady Adams lives a simple, solitary life deep in the Colorado mountains. Here the 35-year-old carpenter works out of a converted barn, crafting exquisite one-of-a-kind furniture. There's little about this strong yet gentle man to suggest the experiences that have alienated him from the contemporary world. But that is about to change.

The Face

He's Hollywood's most dazzling star, who is worshiped by millions and hated by one twisted soul. His existence is under siege as a series of terrifying, enigmatic "messages" breaches the security systems of his Bel Air estate. The boxes arrive mysteriously, one by one, at Channing Manheim's compound. Manheim's security chief, ex-cop Ethan Truman, is used to looking beneath the surface of things. But until he entered the orbit of a Hollywood icon, he had no idea just how slippery reality could be.

Strangers

A handful of people. From different backgrounds, living in different towns and cities across America, they had nothing in common - except fear. Deep in the heart of a sprawling desert, a dark memory called out to them, drawing them to the Tranquility Motel - where the terrifying truth was waiting.

Mr. Murder

Martin Stillwater has a vivid imagination. It charms his loving wife, delights his two little daughters, and gives him all the inspiration he needs to write his highly successful mystery novels. But maybe Martin’s imagination is a bit too vivid.

Cold Fire

Reporter Holly Thorne is intrigued by Jim Ironheart, who has saved 12 lives in the past three months. Holly wants to know what kind of power drives him, why terrifying visions of a churning windmill haunt his dreams, and just what he means when he whispers in his sleep that an enemy who will kill everyone is coming.

The Bad Place

Frank Pollard awakens in an alley, knowing nothing but his name - and that he is in great danger. Having taken refuge in a motel, he wakes again only to find his hands covered in blood. As far as he knows, he's no killer. But whose blood is this, and how did it get there?

Dragon Tears

Harry Lyon was a rational man, a cop who refused to let his job harden his soul. Then one fateful day, he was forced to shoot a man--and a homeless stranger with bloodshot eyes uttered the haunting words that challenged Harry Lyon's sanity: "Ticktock, ticktock. You'll be dead in sixteen hours...Dead by dawn...Dead by dawn...Dead by dawn..."

Fear Nothing

Christopher Snow is the best-known resident of 12,000-strong Moonlight Bay, California. This is because 28-year-old Chris has xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), a light-sensitivity so severe that he cannot leave his house in daylight, cannot enter a normally-lit room, cannot sit at a computer.

Publisher's Summary

On the morning that will mark the end of the world they have known, Molly and Neil Sloan awaken to the drumbeat of rain on their roof. It has haunted their sleep, invaded their dreams, and now they rise to find a luminous silvery downpour drenching their small California mountain town. A strange scent hangs faintly in the air, and the young couple cannot shake the sense of something wrong.

As hours pass and the rain continues to fall, Molly and Neil listen to disturbing news of extreme weather phenomena across the globe. Before evening, their little town loses television and radio reception. Then telephone and the Internet are gone. With the ceaseless rain now comes an obscuring fog that transforms the once-friendly village into a ghostly labyrinth. By nightfall the Sloans have gathered with some of their neighbors to deal with community damage...but also because they feel the need to band together against some unknown threat, some enemy they cannot identify or even imagine.

In the night, strange noises arise, and at a distance, in the rain and the mist, mysterious lights are seen drifting among the trees. The rain diminishes with the dawn, but a moody gray-purple twilight prevails. Soon Molly, Neil, and their small band of friends will be forced to draw on reserves of strength, courage, and humanity they never knew they had. For within the misty gloom they will encounter something that reveals in a terrifying instant what is happening to their world, something that is hunting them with ruthless efficiency.

Epic in scope, searingly intimate, and immediate in perspective, The Taking is an adventure story like no other, a relentless roller-coaster that brings apocalypse to Main Street and showcases the talents of one of our most original and mesmerizing novelists at the pinnacle of his powers.

I have loved Dean Koontz for many years. Even in recent years, when others have complained that his stories are too rambling and less exciting, I have still enjoyed his work. This is the first book he has written that I was completely disappointed with.

I get the distinct feeling that this book was seriously rushed. There is very little character motivation, and the only character that isn't completely two-dimensional is the main character, Molly. Her husband Neil might as well have been a potted plant with a shotgun. And maybe it's just me, and the fact that I've read all his books, but the "twists" were not only highly predictable, but also depressingly lame.

As far as theme, he could not have shoved it down the reader's throat any more forcefully. It became highly annoying, and the book would have greatly benefited from a far more subtle approach.

Nothing in the book makes any sort of sense at all because the main character keeps taking up these false explanations (which are far too simplistic), and so you must wait until the final chapter to figure out what at least some of it meant. The ending, sadly, was the most frustratingly sophomoric ending he has ever written.

Add to that the little-girl voice of the narrator who pronounced at least a handful of words wrong, and you have a sad mixture.

The only good things I can say about this book are that Koontz still has a way with metaphors and his descriptions are vivid.

I am only 3 hours into this book. I just cannot understand HOW whoever is in charge of selecting narrators thought the reader of this one was suitable for a best-selling author like Koontz. Like almost everyone else who gave a review, I feel this reader has no place narrating. Her voice is flat, no inflections, no pauses. Kind of like if Rosie the Robot were reading. When she tries to read male quotes, she sounds like she is gargling. It is very hard to get into the book when you are wincing at the narrator's bad reading.

Wait, I know! Maybe they are trying to force people to buy the hard cover book! That's the only reason I can think of to have a bad reader narrating a best selling novel.

I have listened to over two dozen audible books, and this is by far the worst narrator I have ever suffered through. It was like listening to Donald Duck doing a little girl doing characters. And when she did the men, they sounded like little tiny zombies. This title never had a chance with me, I couldn't get past the narration.

This work of Dean Koontz is a bit thicker than many of his other titles. Dig in to your religion histories, Dantes works, Apocliptic writings, myths, and beliefs, current physics-cosmology, Hawkings multiverse concepts, the writings of man's concepts and beliefs on evil, redemption, and hope... and perhaps then... your ready to grab this book and dig in.

An approach with the actual existance of evil as a given, the whereabouts of 'HELL and it's Potentates, separate universes, or parrallel universes, as a new repesentation of where the 'bad guys'may reside.
A marvelous concept and combination of modern physics, cosmology, the existance of evil, the power and nature of human redemption, and the triumph over the darkness without and within.
I give it an A+. Read it!

Koontz always follows same classic formula, lonely person A, experiencing very strange things, meets hero person B (opposite sex) and somewhere children are involved. Then the mystery unravels itself and you understand what the very strange things were.

This follows his classic structures with 2 exceptions
1) There are dogs this time as well
2) (SPOILER!!) The very strange things are not fully explained but it is implied that they are Biblical.

Listening to this, it seemed like his standard formula with elements of Lassie, E.T. and the Bible mixed in. The abrupt ending was disappointing, but he had built the story up to such a peak, that three quarters of the way through you are thinking "How can this end?"

It still has his good narative and excellent descriptive passages which saves it somewhat and - because of the dogs - I give it a 3 star rating.

It takes a Dean Koontz to put across this oozy tale of apocalypse by alien invasion - or is it? Certainly many die, but maybe they deserve it, and maybe there's somebody making the decisions whom we'll come to respect and thank. But, unlike a Koontz murder thriller, there is no way to to be sure of one's hypothesis.

This book was entertaining and mildly suspensful. For me, it took a long time for this book to get some lift and get into the air. When it did it finally became a worthwhile read (listen). I might have given this audiobook 4 stars but I couldn't solely due to the poor narrator. Get a mental picture (or audio picture) of Sally Field trying to reading Stephan King or for the Aliens screenplay. No depth, no feeling, no tone. When she tried to channel a male voice it sounded like a little girl with a sore throat in search of a lozange. I am sure her voice is better suited to other, lighter type of material but she definitely did not and could not communicate suspense. How and why did the producers pick this person to read this particular material ??

Your initial reaction to the description of The Taking is, "this must be a thriller." And it is. But it is also a very well-done love story set against a supernatural backdrop.

Koonz is masterful at getting us to love the characters, and of course, one way he does that is through the animals in his books. This one is no exception. Koonz again reveals his expertise at making you feel things other writers only allude to in passing.

This fan of Koontz was distressed with the narrator. Her delivery of the prose and absolute inability to deliver credible voice characterizations was so annoying that I nearly abandonded the book in the first chapter. On first hearing her voice I seriously thought that the narration might be first or second generation computer speach. We pay a serious premium for the convience of audio books, and we deserve a better delivery.

I have loved Dean Koontz books for a long time and I have always found his books entertaining and thought provoking and this newest release was no exception. At times the plot was unrealistic and that is what I love so much about sci-fi.